COVID-19: Cartography as a Witness of Change of Spanish Urban Models along History Due to Sanitary Crisis

Abstract

During past centuries, pandemics were something very natural to the human race, but as result of industrialisation during the 19th century, they became a larger problem. The arrival of populations to big cities provoked the development of irregular and overpopulated quarters without any measures of safety, and facilitated the expansion of diseases. The problem resided in sanitation problems, as the example of what happened in London and Paris. As a solution, in different cities, and as a starting point, Paris with the Haussman’s proposals, issued different reforms and extension plans were made in Spain (Nadal 2017, 357-385). Humanity believed that these extension plans would give us a healthy density and an ordered expansion. We opened big boulevards to believe that we had a wide city to walk, but nothing could be further from reality. At the beginning of 20th century, history repeated itself, and now, a new pandemic crisis has shown that cities have, again, a crisis of congestion. Keywords: cartography, cities, COVID-19, urban models